As distributed object systems have become more popular, the ability to employ development tools with user interface (UI) elements has increased. For example, applications exist that include comprehensive tool sets for rapidly building and integrating web services, personal computer applications and web solutions. More particularly, development tools often include visual designers used to design user interface elements.
Conventionally, these visual designers focus only on the task at hand. However, when designing an application, a developer often needs to link the UI being designed to external objects such as data sources, images and other resources. Because the visual designer is designed to work with running instances of objects, there is no way for multiple designers to share resources from other locations within the development project. Therefore, there exists a need for a system that provides a mechanism for global objects (e.g., located elsewhere in the development project) to be shared and used locally by visual designers.
Over the years, attempts have been made to provide a visual designer that prompted rapid application development (RAD) however, these systems have been centered around a specific UI and did not integrate well with other shared resources within the development project environment. Today however, applications tend to be built so that there is a lot of sharing between UI elements and other sections of the application. Therefore, there is a substantial unmet need to extend the RAD experience to these other areas of the application development cycle thus increasing the value of the system by saving developer time. Thus, there exists a substantial unmet need for a system and/or methodology that employs global objects to effect these sharing aspects.